FELLER, FRANÇOIS-XAVIER. — A Jesuit, scholar, and able apologist, b. in Brussels on 18 April 1736, d. in Regensburg on 23 May 1802. Having completed his studies, he began his career as a preacher in Luxembourg and Liège; but the suppression of the Society of Jesus (1773) led him to devote himself entirely to the mission of writing. In this he was aided, besides his talent, by his exceptionally tenacious memory, the many journeys he made throughout Europe, and his keen spirit of observation and inquiry. The French Revolution forced him to leave Belgium and take refuge first in Paderborn and then in Regensburg.
He wrote extensively, with the sole aim of effectively defending religion against the errors then rampant in the Enlightenment, Febronianism, and Josephinism, and in connection with the question of the nunciatures. From 1769 he contributed numerous articles to the Journal de Verdun, or La clef du cabinet des Princes de l'Europe ou recueil historique et politique sur les matières du temps, published in Luxembourg; he intensified this collaboration when, in 1773, he became its director and almost its sole writer, publishing it under the new title of Journal historique et littéraire (60 vols., 1773–94), also published in Luxembourg, until its printing was prohibited by Joseph II because it openly denounced—
FELONIO – F. of the Pontifical Greek College – Rome.
openly denounced its despotic abuses in ecclesiastical affairs; he therefore moved in 1788 to Liège and in 1791 to Maastricht.
The principal articles were subsequently published separately under the title Mélanges de politique, de morale chrétienne et de littérature (4 vols., Louvain 1822–24); they were later reproduced in Cours de morale chrétienne et de littérature religieuse (5 vols., Paris 1826).
The 18 volumes of Recueil de représentations, protestations et réclamations faites à S. M. I. par les représentants et états des dix provinces des Pays-Bas autrichiens assemblés (s. l., from 1773; immediately translated into Flemish [Amsterdam 1787–90]) may be regarded as an addition to the Journal. But his principal work remains the Dictionnaire historique (6 vols., Augsburg 1781–84). Although prohibited by the Austrian government, it underwent successive, continually updated editions, up to the 9th of 1837, when it took the name Biographie universelle, published by M. Pérennès, T. Simonin, and C. Weiss; but the additions and revisions caused it to lose its original character. Other works worth mentioning are Catéchisme philosophique (Liège 1772, under the pseudonym Flexier de Reval), which, reprinted and updated many times both by the author and by others (with the exception of the edition by the countess of Genlis, Paris 1820), held its place in apologetics, owing to its careful clarity and acuity, until the middle of the 19th century. It should not, however, be left unmentioned that in Opuscules théologico-philosophiques (Mechelen 1824, a posthumous collection of pamphlets), F. expressed erroneous views concerning the errors of the Synod of Pistoia, condemned by the bull «Auctorem Fidei»; Cardinal Giacinto Gerdil refuted them in his Animadversiones in notas... cl. Feller (Rome–Venice 1795).